For old times’ sake, Mas pressed down on one of the typewriter keys. Had to have strong fingers to type on these old machines, that’s for sure. Not like those fancy computer keyboards they had now.
He heard the front door open and shut. He walked away from the typewriter, knowing he shouldn’t have been in the room. He kept his hand elevated and waited for Becca to complete her phone call.
“Hello?” It wasn’t Becca but the old lady, Miss Waxley. Miss Waxley was probably a little younger than Mas, but she seemed from another era. She smelled like the fragrance counter of a department store. She probably used a handkerchief to blow her nose and went to the hairdresser’s once a week.
“Mr. Arai,” she said, and Mas was surprised that the hakujin woman had remembered his name. “Where’s Becca?”
“Telephone,” he said, gesturing with his bandaged hand toward the other room.
“What happened?” She put her fancy pocketbook down on the circular table and took a closer look at Mas’s wound.
Mas didn’t want to get into the story, but allowed Miss Waxley to grab a pair of scissors from the desk and snip the loose gauze bandage. “Sank you,” he managed to say.
They stared at each other for a good minute before Miss Waxley tried to make conversation. “Do you know that this was my parents’ room?” Miss Waxley said.
“Oh, yah?”
“In fact, the typewriter and desk were originally theirs.”
Tsumaranai. Boring as hell to hear an old lady talk. But she had extended her friendship by helping Mas with his hand, so he at least owed her some listening time.
“My mother was housebound for years with her illness. She could putter around the house a little; even make some meals, I was told. I don’t have any memories of this house, because we had moved to Manhattan, closer to my father’s office, by the time I was one. It was a new start for our family, I guess.
“Now it’s just me,” Miss Waxley said with a weak smile.
Since everyone called the old lady “miss,” she had probably never married, figured Mas. Even though she had money, she must be lonely, all by herself. Good thing she is involved in the garden project, he thought.
Becca then walked in, freeing Mas from Miss Waxley’s stories. The conversation turned to food, so Mas excused himself, saying that he would be leaving after he put the remaining bandage roll back in the bathroom.
After closing the door of the medicine chest, Mas heard a couple of male voices through the open bathroom window. Underneath the diseased sycamore tree were Phillip and a young man, a teenager, wearing a blue knit beanie cap trimmed in gold.
“This is the last time. I’m telling you,” Phillip said. Mas couldn’t see his face, just the top of his thinning hair. He opened his wallet and stuffed some bills in the boy’s hand. “If you say anything, it’s not only my head, it’s yours, too, remember?”
The boy said nothing. After getting his money, he walked away from the house, toward Flatbush Avenue.
As Mas quickly made his way down the stairs, he heard the jangling of a key at the front door. Slipping out the back, Mas hurried to the sidewalk in search of the teenager in the beanie cap.
There was no sign of him on Flatbush. He couldn’t have walked that quickly, unless he had taken a taxi, Mas thought. Or the underground train, a block away. Mas headed for the hole of the train station, marked this time by the letter Q in a yellow circle. He had no idea what direction the boy would travel, so he did what any betting man did in cases like this-he took a wild guess. Train going to Manhattan.
The train had already arrived, and the doors were open. Entering the train, Mas scanned the crowd for the blue beanie cap. There was no time for hesitation. Before the doors screeched closed, Mas dashed in like a cockroach seeking shelter. This time there were plenty of empty seats. Jerking left and right, Mas walked the whole length of one car. No luck. Looking through the window in the door of the adjoining car, Mas learned that he had scored a home run. In the far corner sat the teenager, his eyes closed, oblivious that he was being watched.
After entering the teenager’s car, Mas made himself comfortable in an empty seat down the same row. Phillip was obviously paying the boy off to keep a secret. But what kind of secret was Phillip keeping? Had he paid off the boy to kill his father? Mas shuddered. He hated to think that a son would go to such lengths to calculate his father’s murder.
Hadn’t that newspaper article said that Phillip was the number two man at Kazzy’s company? Mas knew many customers who had their sons working for them. More often than not, some kind of problem would come up, and eventually the son was not welcome at the parents’ house anymore.
Mas looked down the row of passengers to the boy in the beanie cap again. He could pass for hakujin, but Mas wouldn’t be surprised if the boy was part Asian, Latino, or even Jewish or Arabian. He had a strong nose, dark skin, and a healthy crop of black beard stubble, along with a pair of pork-chop sideburns. Mas could tell he was not baka; the kid had some smarts, based on the way he sat with his back straight, not hunched over, and his shoes flat on the ground.
Stop after stop, Mas waited for the boy to rouse out of his sleep. But even when the train emerged from below ground, the boy did not stir. They traveled over a bridge, its metal girders casting shadows over the windows of the train. Below was the gray slate of the river, which both comforted and saddened Mas. Some would say water was water, but Mas could feel the difference between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Pacific had a greenish tinge, containing the promise of fish strong enough to withstand the power of sewage and other man-made pollution. The Atlantic, on the other hand, seemed to be covered with a cold, concretelike layer. Mas knew that there must be some kind of life underneath, but it was well hidden from those above sea level.
The train churned ahead to an island full of skyscrapers, a small pot full of overgrown plants. Mas glanced at his Casio watch. Already four o’clock. It would be dark soon. He regretted that he had left his Dodgers cap on the couch back at the apartment.
After a muffled message over the intercom-Mas couldn’t make out the street but heard “ Times Square ”-the boy finally rose. He pulled at his knit cap, as if he wanted more protection for the backs of his earlobes. As the boy scanned the rest of the people in the train car, Mas quickly lowered his eyes. No flicker of recognition. Mas, fortunately, was passed over again.
With the opening of the doors, out went the boy, Mas right behind. Tug had described this island of Manhattan as a river of people, and he wasn’t just making up stories. Even starting in the train station, the crowd pushed and pulled Mas forward, as if he didn’t need to take any steps of his own.
His hand still smarted, but shikata ga nai. There was nothing he could do about it, so there was no sense in crying about the pain.